Well Heeled
by amonitrate
Summary: Tony doesn't apologize. He never does.


**Well Heeled**

Pepper Potts stares down into the empty trunk of Tony Stark's Audi and lets out a very unprofessional curse.

In this moment she feels excruciatingly like one of Cinderella's stepsisters -- not the defanged Disneyfied versions, but the harpies from the Brothers Grimm story who out of jealousy (and probably more than a little desperation) chopped off pieces of their own feet in an attempt to fit into the magical glass slipper. She doesn't even have the excuse they did -- there's no prince waiting to whisk her back to his castle. Not really. Not a fairy tale kind of prince anyway. More like a spoiled man-child who has more money than any Disney hero could ever imagine and uses it to pay the outrageous (but well deserved) salary that allows her to buy the designer shoes that, while not the _cause _of the predicament in which she finds herself, have conspired to add a layer of misery to the proceedings.

The shoes are her own fault and she knows it, much as she'd love to blame Tony for them, too. She knows her shoes are ridiculous. They're not terribly comfortable, they're not terribly practical (and if she's anything, Pepper Potts is _practical_), and they cost too much. But the biggest advantage to the shoes, one of the reasons why she wears them aside from the fact that she _likes _them), is that they make her taller than most of the men she works with. And when you work for a man like Tony Stark, you take any psychological advantage you can get.

All of this means next to nothing right now, though, because right now Pepper wishes she had let her more modest taste in business attire extend to her footwear, height advantage be damned. Because right now she is hobbling like a lame horse, wishing someone would come along and do the merciful thing. She felt less like a damsel in distress when Obadiah Stane had loomed over her in his inflated mockery of Tony's armor, despite the fact that she'd been wearing these very same shoes. The strappy four inch heels had held up to running over shattered glass and metal grating and dodging an arc reactor explosion only to be defeated by a broken piece of concrete in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven ten miles from Tony's house.

Maybe this is his fault after all. He's the one who'd developed the sudden craving for Chef Boyardee at midnight. Then again, she's the fool who agreed to venture out on the snack run, because she'd given up trying to make him focus on planning a memorial service for Obadiah (S.H.I.E.L.D.'s "tragic accident" made the news yesterday and a public memorial is an uncomfortable necessity) and she'd needed a break from him. And because canned ravioli had sounded like heaven to her too. Not that she'll ever let on. She'd never hear the end of it.

So she'd driven out to the only place open this late on a weeknight and bought four cans of ravioli, marveling once again that even in Malibu the all-night convenience stores managed to project a vaguely seedy aura of threat. She was hurrying back to the car when she stumbled and hit the pavement with a decidedly undignified squawk, only to discover the narrow heel of one of her shoes had snapped in half. And that had only been the start of her bad luck.

* * *

"Look," she says into her phone, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. "Just come and get me. I know you know where the 7-Eleven is. I think your Slurpee consumption alone keeps them in business."

"Can't," Tony says in that absent way he gets when he's talking to her with the two percent of his brain not occupied by his current project. "Jarvis is in the middle-"

"I'm stranded. It's one a.m. There are no cabs for miles and I'm not waiting around for AAA." Pepper takes what she hopes is a calming breath and stares down at her broken left heel. Her knees are skinned and stinging and there's gravel embedded in her palms. "If you want your ravioli, you'll have to sacrifice twenty minutes. Jarvis can take care of things while you're gone."

Something in her voice must have alerted the other ninety-eight percent of Tony's brain that he'd better pay attention. Finally. There's a long moment of silence. "What happened again?"

Pepper nearly hurls the phone to the concrete. She's already spent five minutes explaining; if she'd known he wasn't listening she wouldn't have bothered. "Flat tire," she says. "I took your car and you don't have a spare, let alone any tools. Thanks for that, by the way." She makes a mental note to take her own car on errands from now on. He's a goddamned engineering genius, and he can't remember to keep a spare tire in his trunk?

"Oh," Tony says. He doesn't apologize. He never does. "Um. Right. Want me to call Happy for you?"

She hears the clicking of fingers on a keyboard and sees red. "It's _one a.m_. Happy's probably _asleep_. Happy lives in _Riverside_. You're awake and you're ten minutes away and you have five other cars, Tony. Choose one and come pick me up if you ever want to see me again."

"Yeah. Yeah, okay." She wonders if she needs to call Jarvis and order him to power down all of the computers. She can do that now – Tony programmed in remote access to Jarvis after Obadiah's betrayal. It had even been his idea. One she'll make him sorely regret if--

"I'm getting in the car now," he says, more solid, more focused now. "_Where _are you?"

* * *

When he pulls up in the Ferrari he's still wearing the grubby thermal undershirt that doesn't hide the arc reactor's glow in the least and the preoccupied expression that tells her she's lucky he found the 7-Eleven at all, let alone found it without hitting a tree.

"Get out of the car," she orders, pointing at him. He squints at her narrowly, obviously puzzled, and her stomach flops as she realizes that when she told him to come pick her up she'd forgotten that he'd been hitting the Scotch all night. And even sober he's completely useless while he's working -- wherever his body happens to be, his mind stays with his computer models and his welding tools and his robots.

"I'm not riding with you when you're this distracted," she says. "I'll drive."

"You're mad, aren't you," he prods once she's pulled onto the freeway. His tone is flippant but he's watching her out of the corners of his eye.

Pepper focuses on the road, on the twin circles of light on the asphalt, and ignores him.

"You are, you're mad. I can tell." It's as if the possibility of her anger is alien and new to him, as if it's an earth-shattering discovery that he's already planning on writing up for _Scientific American_. Somehow this only makes her angrier. "Why are you mad?"

"Tony--" She stops. He's not going to understand. "You-- I just--" She sighs. He's not acting any differently than usual, but tonight she doesn't have the patience. "I shouldn't have to harangue you for twenty minutes when I need you to do something for me."

She's not even sure she's talking about the flat tire anymore. Maybe he gets that, because for once he's left without a comeback. And that irritates her too - part of her craves the fight. Because Pepper doesn't get angry very often Tony doesn't have much practice with it, so she's surprised when the silence sticks. He pulls one of the cans of pasta out of the 7-Eleven bag and turns it in his hands, traces the shape of it with his fingers.

"My mom refused to let me eat this stuff," he ventures as she pulls the Ferrari into the driveway and guides it through the curved descent into his garage. This is only the second or third time she's heard him mention his mother in all the years she's worked for him but Pepper doesn't respond -- she's still too infuriated to be careful with him -- and he doesn't elaborate.

Instead he bolts out of the passenger seat as soon as she puts the Ferrari into park. She watches him head for the workshop's kitchenette, the plastic bag dangling from his hand, and lets out a sigh. Lets go of the steering wheel. Tries to let go of everything else. Doesn't quite succeed.

Pepper opens the driver's side door and pulls off her ruined shoe and its intact mate. Pads barefoot past the crumpled shell of the Mark III armor where Tony's left it laid out in pieces on the cool concrete floor. A pale glow catches her eye and she's drawn to one of the litter-strewn tables. The original miniature arc reactor, the one Tony wore back from Afghanistan -- the one that had kept him alive long enough to take down Obadiah -- has been carefully set back into the cradle she'd had made for it after the first time he roped her into sticking her hands into his chest to install the new model. Tony must have told Butterfingers to clean up, because a neat pile of shattered glass from the case sits nearby, the edges sharp against her fingertips when she reaches out to touch.

Her head droops like it's full of lead, like she's submerged and the current is dragging her to the bottom of the sea. She lets her eyes drift shut. A moment later the smell of warmed over ravioli opens them again. Pepper blinks and raises her head to see Tony standing on the other side of the work table, a bowl of Chef Boyardee in each hand, his attention divided between her face and her fingers where they rest on the broken glass. He holds one of the bowls out to her in silent offering and then wanders back to his computers after she takes it from him.

"Jarvis," he says to the air, "call AAA and have them tow my car back from the 7-Eleven off the Ventura Freeway."

Jarvis responds and though she's not listening to his words his accented voice is a balm to her lingering annoyance, despite the fact that he's not real, not real at all, just an elaborate toy Tony made up so he'd have someone to talk to who always knew what the hell he was talking about. Her feet ache and her knees hurt and she's cold and the scent of tomato sauce is making her stomach clench and Tony's forgotten to give her a fork. He's probably eating his with his fingers.

Pepper crosses to the kitchenette. Drops her shoes onto the counter top and finds herself a fork. Washes gravel and grime from her hands. Digs out the first aid kit and takes care of her knees. Boils water for tea and nukes the bowl of ravioli back to scalding. Then she curls up in the corner of the couch, the clatter of typing and Tony's shorthand chatter to Jarvis lulling her like white noise as she eats.

* * *

She doesn't realize she's fallen asleep until she surfaces from a dream where she's sliced her hands open on the broken shards of a glass slipper. There's a scratchy wool blanket spread over her and she's not sure where she is at first, and then from across the cavernous workshop she hears the muted one-sided banter between Tony and whichever mechanical pal he's got playing assistant. She pulls the blanket close and lets herself settle back into the couch cushions.

The next time she wakes she opens her eyes to find Tony sprawled on the floor near her knees, slumped asleep against the couch, her broken shoe cradled in his hands. She looks down at him, at the new lines on his face and the traces of silver in his hair and the soft blue-white light of the arc reactor in the center of his chest. A muscle in his jaw twitches and his eyes flutter under the lids and he drops the shoe when she nudges his shoulder. He sits up, blinking at her, and there's a brief moment when he's not awake enough to mask the strain of the last few months.

"You're still here," he says softly, as if it's perfectly normal for him to wake up on the floor and her presence is the unusual bit of the equation. Maybe it is. Normal and Tony Stark have never particularly been on speaking terms, but since he got back it's felt like he's started drawing up battle plans and mustering troops for the final assault.

"I'm still here," she echoes. If he obliterates Normal altogether, where will that leave her?

"You know, your shoe is beyond saving." He picks it up from his lap and hands it to her. "I couldn't do anything for it."

"I know," Pepper mourns, running a finger over the broken heel. "At least it didn't suffer."

Tony's lips quirk the tiniest bit and his gaze won't leave hers and she's gone beyond tired to giddy, because suddenly it's all too much -- the shoe, her anger at him, his refusal to deal with Obadiah -- everything is funny in that half-hysterical way things get when you really, really need sleep.

"So what should we do with it?" he asks, and if Pepper is giddy in her exhaustion he's gone uncharacteristically solemn, though amusement crinkles the corners of his eyes.

"Give it a hero's burial," she says. "It fell in the line of duty after a valiant record of service."

She doesn't know how he makes the connection, since she's sure he's never paid close enough attention to her feet to know she was wearing these shoes when she led S.H.I.E.L.D. into the lion's den to arrest Obadiah, but he's Tony Stark and so he does, and his eyes go flat, and he's the first to look away.

His fingers brush over the arc reactor, absently tracing its circumference. According to her watch it's just after six and she remembers with a jolt that Tony's little announcement the other day and the news of Obadiah's death have triggered an emergency board meeting that starts in two hours. A meeting where Tony will have to convince a room full of nervous businessmen (and two businesswomen) that he's not completely insane. A meeting for which she's woefully unprepared. Not to mention the fact that she's gotten about three hours of sleep and is still wearing yesterday's clothes.

"I have to go," she says, folding the blanket. "I have to get ready."

"Get ready?" He's not quite meeting her eyes yet, his expression tattered around the edges.

"Board meeting," she reminds him. She keeps a spare suit here but what she wants more than anything is to eat breakfast in her own apartment. Just to be in her own space, if only for a few minutes, before she has to face the consequences of everything that's happened in the past four days. "You have to get ready, too. Happy's scheduled to pick you up at seven. I'll meet you there."

"Board meeting." He rubs at his eyes. "Right. Yeah, okay. Board meeting it is."

"Wear something conservative this time, okay? And take a shower?"

Tony makes no move to get up, his attention drifting back to her shoe. Pepper's not convinced of his sanity on the best of days, but then she sees much more of him than the board ever will. She sets the blanket aside and unfolds herself from the couch.

He follows her upstairs. Follows her to his front door. Lingers there, leaning on the door frame, watching as she climbs barefoot into her car and backs it down his long driveway. He's still there when she reaches the road and all she can see of him is the circle of white light at his chest.

She forgets about the broken shoe until she's standing at the back of the Stark Industries conference room three hours later, watching Tony lay on just the right amount of charm despite the fact that he'd got even less sleep than she did. Afterwards she rides back with him in the limo and he crashes hard and she and Happy have to herd him into his bedroom where he immediately collapses in a heap on the bed. She can only convince him to take off his shoes and tie before he's out like a switch has been thrown. Pepper leaves him there snoring on top of his bedclothes, thanks Happy for his help, and makes her way to down the workshop. Though she spends an hour hunting through toolboxes and bins of wire and metal drawers her shoes are no where to be found. She could ask Jarvis, she could wait until Tony wakes up and ask him - but she decides to let it go.

Happy gives her a ride back to her car. She makes it home in one piece but by the time she gets there it's mid afternoon and she can never sleep in the day time. So she draws a bath and resolutely doesn't think of anything and gives herself the rest of the day off.

When Pepper arrives at the house the next morning, fresh from a solid ten hours of slumber and more centered than she's been in a week, her lost shoes are standing at attention on the petrified wood table in the den. She picks them up, brow furrowed, and turns them over in her hands. Both of the heels have been replaced with precisely machined metal, buffed to a silvery grey sheen and attached seamlessly to the leather. She slips them on and isn't surprised in the least to find them perfectly light and balanced.

She wears them when she descends into the workshop to bring Tony his espresso and his schedule for the day, and though his gaze immediately zeros in on her feet and then bounces up to her eyes he doesn't mention them and neither does she.


End file.
